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Google's CEO Is Feeling Secure

The perks behind the buck.

The fact that April Fool's Day falls squarely during proxy filing season worked out well for the Fool this year, since our big prank earlier this week was claiming The Motley Fool planned to push for a "CEO Bill of Rights." Learning that one well-known company spent more than $500,000 for "security" for a CEO better known for making a measly dollar in salary sounds like it could have been part of our joke.

Google is (NASDAQ:GOOG) well-known for paying its top managers, including CEO Eric Schmidt, $1 in base salary. They're in good company, since other high-profile corporations have done the same thing -- think Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO). There's a lot of shareholder ire over large CEO pay packages these days, so the $1 salary is good PR. However, now that new accounting regulations force companies to disclose the monetary value of other compensation such as options and perks, it throws more light onto the whole "$1 in salary" issue.

One can't help but wonder what Schmidt's "security" consisted of, especially since that $500K-plus figure represents more than what many of us could hope to bring home over the course of years. A team of 24/7 ninja bodyguards armed with titanium throwing stars and the more instant gratification of personal Tasers (NASDAQ:TASR)? A compound reinforced with Raytheon's (NYSE:RTN) "Goodbye Weapon" (more blandly known as the "Active Denial System")?

Well, we may never know that, nor exactly who or what the company is concerned is going to come after Schmidt. (Zombie hordes? Rioting shareholders? Killer bees? Viacom (NYSE:VIA)?) One part of our multifaceted April Fool's joke was a poll asking readers to vote on what perks CEOs should receive; our decidedly surreal option "free baby" won by a landslide, with nearly 80% of the votes. We got a huge kick out of that, but it certainly makes the point that sometimes CEOs receive strange stuff. Why not ninjas?

At any rate, the proxy filing showed that Schmidt and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each made a buck in base salary and extremely modest bonuses of $1,723 apiece. Of course, the value of their stock holdings shows that none of these guys are hurting, valued at $5 billion, $13.5 billion, and $13.7 billion, respectively. Google's filing also showed that Schmidt received more than $22,000 to help out with the tax bill related to his use of another corporate perk: personal use of the company's aircraft.

Perhaps it's not fair to complain too much about the perks, since thus far, Google has performed very well as a publicly traded company. And the $1 base salary is a gesture of goodwill, since these guys have voluntarily foregone the large salaries they could have commanded. However, shareholders shouldn't forget that it is a gesture, since the buck doesn't stop at a buck. Generally speaking, there's much more than meets the eye when it comes to all types of CEO compensation, so keep an eye out for those proxy disclosures this year.

Author

Alyce Lomax is a columnist for Fool.com specializing in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and an analyst for Motley Fool One. From October 2010 through June 2015, she managed the real-money Prosocial Portfolio, which integrated socially responsible investing factors into stock analysis. Follow @AlyceLomax